Exercise 9 – The observations 

The observation exercise was actually really engaging and I liked thinking back to things I had noticed and writing about them in detail. I wrote about two construction workers who were having a coffee and a cig at around 10 a.m. and even if it had been days before, I was able to recall details and track a train of thought about those individuals. I wrote about 500 words in 20 minutes just about this one small moment, and once again, I felt some inspiration around the stories of strangers and how easy it can be to draw stories from reality. I am trying now to make a conscious effort not to be more observant as I feel I already am, but instead, actually write about these observations and note my thoughts about them immediately. 

Filming one of the observations did not go how I would have done it individually, but I suppose that is a consequence of collaboration. We drew inspiration from an observation of an elderly woman struggling with technology and her granddaughter helping her. However, what we filmed definitely took creative liberties and we created a story of students trying to film a scene but being terrible at using the camera and microphone and needing help from a different student. If I were to do that exercise again and had the chance to take it in the direction I would have preferred, I would have focused on the age difference and the idea of distant generations having their own skills and needing to rely on each other, rather than just the “someone needs help with technology” side of things. Obviously, this was more difficult to do in class as we had a time limit and restricted resources in terms of set, actors and planning time, but I think it is still interesting to see how different the ideas of the group were and how uniquely everybody thinks with their creation of work. 

Reading through the observations, so many of them would have made great short films if there was the time and resources to create them. This exercise was actually really helpful for learning how to develop ideas and create an initial script, and again, I am eager to focus on the stories that can be inspired by just individual people existing and the moments that happen in everybody’s lives that often only they experience. The power of observation is something that helps see these small moments and make something bigger out of them.